Thank you, Eliot Spitzer.

The New York Attorney General's recent crackdown on financial-services companies -- not to mention the ever-evolving strictures of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act and other regulatory requirements -- are fueling demand for in-house attorneys.

It's not a new phenomenon: Corporate America has been scrambling to protect itself ever since the Enron Corp. and WorldCom Inc. debacles hit back in 2001 and 2002.

But heading into 2006, the trend is still strong. Companies of all stripes, especially financial-services firms, are upgrading their in-house legal talent and giving their top lawyers more impressive titles -- often that of "Chief Legal Officer" -- as well as more sweeping responsibilities. Meanwhile, not surprisingly, median salaries for senior corporate lawyers continue to rise. According to Altman Weil Inc., a consulting firm based in Newtown Square, Pa., in 2005, chief legal officers saw a 4.1% increase in their salaries over that of 2004, to a median of $287,500, while their bonuses soared 39.5% to a median $171,600.

One of the splashier recent hires happened in October when Bethesda, Md.-based Lockheed Martin Corp. hired James Comey to succeed the retiring Frank Menaker as general counsel. Mr. Comey made his high-profile reputation battling both white-collar criminals and the likes of the Gambino crime family as the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York in Manhattan and as a deputy attorney general in the U.S. Department of Justice -- from where he was hired. At Lockheed, Mr. Comey is managing a team of more than 100 lawyers, earning an unknown salary. (According to regulatory filings, Mr. Menaker earned $1.46 million in salary and bonus in 2004.)

Mr. Comey is just one of many top government lawyers recently to jump to the corporate sector. In April 2005, Ford Motor Co. brought David Leitch, a former deputy White House counsel in house to be the automaker's general counsel. In September 2005, David Kornblau, the former chief litigation counsel at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's Division of Enforcement, joined Merrill Lynch & Co. to head the brokerage firm's regulatory legal division. United Technologies Corp., PepsiCo Inc., General Electric Co. and Tyco Corp. also have raided government agencies in search of top legal talent in the last few years.

More than ever, public companies are called upon to make business decisions with legal ramifications in mind. So their in-house legal advisers are now more likely to sit in on "C-suite" meetings and be asked for their advice early on key business moves.

"Publicly-traded companies are in the lead here, because they are the ones that face all kinds of new challenges and scrutiny, both from their investors and from the variety of regulators that they deal with," says Jeffrey Lowe, a Washington, D.C.-based partner at Major, Lindsey & Africa, a legal recruiting firm.

As a result, companies want their candidates for senior posts in finance and law to have significant risk-management experience, says Julie Goldberg, a senior client partner and managing partner of the legal specialty practice at recruiting firm Korn/Ferry International in New York.

"The CEO wants to know granular examples of how a candidate helped the business he or she worked for manage risk," she explains. As a result, she says, candidates are often expected to interview not only with direct reports, but with the chief executive officer and sometimes also with board members. It hasn't always been this way. According to Ms. Goldberg, in the past, a candidate to run, say, a litigation department might only have interviewed with his or her direct report, typically the general counsel or chief legal officer.

Adds Major, Lindsey's Mr. Lowe: "It used to be you needed to find someone who had a lot of knowledge of litigation. But these days, companies also want Sarbanes-Oxley familiarity, regulatory knowledge, and so on, right down the list."

The biggest wave of regulator-related hiring, say some legal recruiters, is hitting the financial services industry. In many instances, says Korn/Ferry's Ms. Goldberg, investment banks and brokerage houses aren't merely prowling for candidates when in-house vacancies arise, but are creating brand-new in-house legal positions. Merrill Lynch's Mr. Kornblau is just one recent example. UBS Investment Bank and Bank of America Corp. have also tapped Treasury Department and SEC lawyers to be general counsel or regulatory affairs experts in the past few years.

"[Companies] take them out of law firms, poach them directly from regulatory agencies," says George Whittemore, executive senior partner at the Lucas Group in New York. (The Lucas Group is a business partner of CareerJournal.com.) "There is a real dearth of experienced and talented people in this arena; it is hard for us to find enough candidates."

As a result of the booming demand, an experienced attorney who can oversee the regulatory operations of an investment company can command an annual salary of $300,000 to $400,000, plus bonus and an option package or equity participation, Mr. Whittemore says.  According to Mr. Whittemore, these salary levels are roughly 33% to 50% higher than they were pre-Sarbanes-Oxley. "The market has moved considerably," he says.

For example, Mr. Whittemore recently conducted a search for two lawyers on behalf of an investment bank that was trying to beef up the legal team in its asset-management division. The bank wanted two candidates, each with international and compliance experience. One successful candidate came from a private-equity firm, the other from another asset-management company. Each had six to eight years of experience, and was rewarded with annual salaries of close to $300,000, plus bonus.

According to Mr. Whittemore, the new salary levels still generally represent cost savings to companies, which might otherwise be forced to fork out $400 an hour for the time of a senior associate within a law firm.